RESOURCES.

Fight fat, get fit

June 13, 2004|By Verna Noel Jones.

Achieving fitness gets harder after age 40 because your metabolism slows, and muscle that isn't actively engaged atrophies. For more ways to keep in shape as you age, turn to the June issue of Redbook for 21 medically proven ways to burn fat faster.

Some ideas are familiar--pump iron, eat breakfast, avoid refined carbohydrates, increase your workouts and get enough sleep. Yet there are other interesting and easy suggestions. You can burn as many as 1,000 calories a day by doing fidgety things like pacing while on the phone, stretching, and crossing and uncrossing your legs.

You'll also burn more calories if you eat more bananas, which increase your metabolism by regulating the body's water balance. Eat more fish, too, to lower your level of leptin, a hormone linked to low metabolism and obesity. Finally, think like a kid and eat a PB&J. It contains magnesium, which energizes cells to kick up your metabolism.

Vitamin ABCs

It isn't enough to pop handfuls of vitamins for optimal health. You need to know the right amounts of three critical ones, notes the June Harvard Health Letter. For example, it's best to get vitamin A in the form of beta carotene rather than retinol, which studies have linked to weaker bones and hip fractures. Kale and other leafy green vegetables offer more beta carotene.

Vitamin B12 intake is especially important for people over age 60 and vegetarians because it helps protect against heart attack, stroke and memory loss. You need just 2.4 mcg daily, which is easily ingested through fortified breakfast cereals.

Finally, don't bother taking huge amounts of vitamin C pills. Your body will excrete amounts over 200 to 400 mg a day. It's best to get this vitamin by eating fruits and vegetables.

That crazy colic

Colicky babies are no fun. Their chronic day-and-night fussiness makes both parents and the child miserable for months. According to a feature in BabyTalk, some 20 percent of infants have colic, but the causes--allergies, environmental sensitivity and gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD--often are treatable.

Babies with GERD may do better on a formula such as Enfamil AR, which is thickened with finely ground rice cereal. If your pediatrician OKs it, moms who breast-feed may try adding a little cereal to their pumped breast milk to thicken it. Children with reflux also should be fed at least every three hours.

If allergies are suspected, Mom may need to alter her diet by cutting out chocolate, coffee and vegetables that induce gas.

As for environment, some babies simply react more to various stimulants in the world around them. Try dimming the lights, changing the way the baby is swaddled or altering her body position so there's less pressure on her tummy.

Check lung function

Midlifers with a chronic cough and shortness of breath may blame their symptoms on aging or being out of shape, but the symptoms could be a sign of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or COPD. Current and former smokers are particularly at risk, even if they tossed out the cigarettes 10 years previously.

A health report in the June issue of More says women at midlife are at higher risk than men for COPD, the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Eighty to 90 percent of the cases of COPD result from smoking a pack of cigarettes daily for 20 years or two packs a day for 10 years.

Early diagnosis is critical, before symptoms increase to the point that it's difficult to breathe even when climbing stairs. Many patients fail to get diagnosed until almost half their lung function is gone, says Dr. Neil Schachter, medical director of the respiratory care department of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. If you have concerns about lung function, ask your physician for a simple, six-second lung function test called spirometry.